In 1885, having completed his prep-school
education, he [Van] went up to Chose University
in England (Ada, 1.28).
At Chose Van studies psychiatry and begins to
perform in variety shows as Mascodagama, dancing on his hands
(1.30).
Chose on the Ranta river looks not unlike Cambridge,
VN's alma mater on Granta (Cam). In 1927 VN wrote
The University Poem modeling it
on the Onegin stanza (ababeecciddiff) turned upside down
(aabeebiiccodod*).
From Pushkin's Eugene Onegin (Three: IV: 13 - V:
9):
"Боюсь: брусничная вода
Мне не наделала б
вреда.
Скажи: которая Татьяна?»
— Да та, которая
грустна
И молчалива, как Светлана,
Вошла и села у окна.—
Неужто ты
влюблён в меньшую?»
— А что? — «Я выбрал бы другую,
Когда б я был, как ты,
поэт.
В чертах у Ольги жизни нет.
Точь-в-точь в Вандиковой
Мадонне"
"I fear that lingonberry water
may not unlikely do me harm.
Tell me, which was Tatiana?"
"Oh, she's the one
who, melancholy
and silent like Svetlana,
entered and sat down by the
window."
"How come you're with the younger one in
love?"
"Why, what's the matter?" "I'd have
chosen the other,
if I had been like you a poet.
In Olga's features there's no life,
just as in a Vandyke Madonna"
Unlike Lenski who fell in love with Olga, Tatiana's
younger sister, Van - even though he is not a poet (or, perhaps,
because he isn't one) - chose
Ada, Lucette's elder sister.
Btw., lingonberries (brusnika**) are mentioned
in Ada (1.38): The roast
hazel-hen (or rather its New World representative, locally called 'mountain
grouse') was accompanied by preserved lingonberries (locally called 'mountain
cranberries'). As to voda (water), Aqua is
Marina's twin sister who married Demon Veen, Marina's lover, Van's and
Ada's father. It was because of poor Aqua's madness that Van chose to
study psychiatry.
Of course, chose is French for "thing." On his
way home from the picnic in Ardis the Second (1.39) Van, sitting in a victoria
beside Ada and holding Lucette on his knees, remembers Ada's lolita (a very
airy and ample skirt) and "the Chose young
things:"
He remembered with a pang of pleasure the
indulgent skirt Ada had been wearing then [four years ago
when in similar circumstances Ada was sitting in Van's lap], so
swoony-baloony as the Chose young things said, and he regretted (smiling) that
Lucette had those chaste shorts on today, and Ada, husked-corn (laughing)
trousers.
I notice that chose occurs in La Fontaine's
Nicaise (ll. 60-61), "a slightly salacious piece of 258
lines," quoted by VN in Translator's Introduction (The "Eugene
Onegin" Stanza) to EO:
Autre chose que des soupirs,
Interprètes de ses désirs.
VN points out that to a Russian ear these two lines are
fascinatingly like Pushkin's clausules.
*VN had to
change/reverse Pushkin's scheme of masculine and feminine
rhymes
**see anagram with brusnika in one of my previous
posts; in his EO Commentary VN has an interesting note on
brusnika
Alexey Sklyarenko